{"id":433627,"date":"2026-02-19T06:12:13","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T06:12:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/433627\/"},"modified":"2026-02-19T06:12:13","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T06:12:13","slug":"deepest-ever-rock-core-extracted-from-under-antarctic-ice-sheet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/433627\/","title":{"rendered":"Deepest-ever rock core extracted from under Antarctic ice sheet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"A vast snowy landscape dotted with a cluster of yellow tents and a lone figure.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/d41586-026-00520-0_52074498.jpg\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure__caption u-sans-serif\">Researchers on the SWAIS2C project camped on the ice \u2014 the site is 700 kilometres from the nearest Antarctic station.Credit: Ana Tovey\/SWAIS2C<\/p>\n<p>An international team of scientists has returned from the heart of West Antarctica with 228 metres of ancient rock and mud, the longest core ever retrieved from below an ice sheet.<\/p>\n<p>Preliminary dating, based on the presence of fossilized algae that only existed during specific geological periods, suggests that the core represents an archive of the past 23 million years. This includes periods when Earth\u2019s average surface temperature was hotter than today\u2019s \u2014 and higher than the temperature projected for 2100 under current global climate policies.<\/p>\n<p>The core was retrieved as part of the Sensitivity of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet to 2 \u00b0C (SWAIS2C) project. It aims to determine how far the West Antarctic Ice Sheet retreated during previous periods of global warming, and whether there is a temperature threshold after which its retreat becomes irreversible.<\/p>\n<p>Antarctica holds most of the world\u2019s fresh water locked up in ice. Melting of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet alone would raise global sea levels by up to five metres. It is already losing mass at an accelerating rate, and scientists are concerned that further warming could trigger rapid changes.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"figure__image\" alt=\"Animated sequence from footage of the camera descending down the 523m hole melted in the ice.\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/d41586-026-00520-0_52074496.gif\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"figure__caption u-sans-serif\">The SWAIS2C team drilled a 523-metre hole in the ice to extract a 228-metre sediment core.Credit: Ana Tovey\/SWAIS2C<\/p>\n<p>The team drilled at Crary Ice Rise, a site where the ice sheet remains pinned to bedrock but is close to lifting off into the Ross Ice Shelf, the world\u2019s largest mass of floating ice. The site is more than 700 kilometres from the nearest Antarctic station.<\/p>\n<p>The expedition was high-stakes. Technical issues thwarted drilling attempts during two previous seasons, and project co-leader Huw Horgan, a glaciologist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, knew that this season would be a \u2018boom or bust\u2019 situation.<\/p>\n<p>Success at last<\/p>\n<p>First, the team cut a hole through 523 metres of ice using a hot-water drill and set up a geological rig to core through the bedrock below. Drilling in Antarctic conditions is hard, says Horgan: \u201cYou really worry about every single length of core.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Researchers on the SWAIS2C project camped on the ice \u2014 the site is 700 kilometres from the nearest&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":433628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[556,45293,59,4230,4231,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-433627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-science","tag-climate-change","tag-climate-sciences","tag-gb","tag-humanities-and-social-sciences","tag-multidisciplinary","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=433627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/433627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/433628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=433627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=433627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=433627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}